Incitement

At an election event earlier this year the foreign minister said that disloyal Arab citizens of Israel should be decapitated. The State Attorney declines to investigate, exposing a glaring disparity in the freedom of speech — and incitement — granted to Jewish and Arab politicians. On March 8, 2015, at a pre-election conference at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said about Arab citizens of Israel: Those who support us should get everything – up to half the kingdom. As for those who are against us, there is no other option before us – we must raise the…

The success of the Joint List is the Arab public’s message — an outstretched hand — to its Jewish compatriots, which is the antithesis of the message it received in return. By Haggai Matar and Yael Marom Nearly one quarter of Israeli voters cast their ballots for a prime minister whose central message to the public on election day was that Arab citizens of Israel are the enemy. An almost equal number of people cast their votes for: the guy who joined him in delivering that message, the head of the most right-wing party in the Knesset (Naftali Bennett); the guy who based…

The Gaza war was a clear choice for +972's selection as story of the year (read it here). But the other nominated stories need to be told, too. +972 bloggers explain why they made their nominations. From the kidnappings to a new paradigm for Jewish-Arab relations to a growing opposition among U.S. Jews. The kidnap-murder of three Israeli teenagers By Larry Derfner As of June 12, Hamas had not fired a rocket into Israel for more than a year-and-a-half. Since the start of 2014, one Israeli had been killed in a Palestinian attack in the West Bank, while 22 Palestinian…

From bombs dropped on innocent children in Gaza to the increasing gap between rich and poor, there are many good reasons why the current government needs to go. 1. Israel is going to early elections, but not because this government went on an unnecessary adventure in Gaza killing 500 innocent children only a few months ago. 2. Israel is going to early elections, but not because this government failed in making any progress toward ending the occupation of millions of Palestinians, while continually denying them the basic right to determine their own future. 3. Israel is going to early elections,…

From Protective Edge to the Jerusalem implosion, the mentality of conflict has been pushed under a microscope. During that time I’ve noticed a few axioms about how Israelis experience these wars. I imagine other sides in other conflicts may share them too, although they require pretty close scrutiny and insider knowledge – so I won’t venture to generalize. Here is what I’ve seen. “Our” in this case means “Israeli,” since I am one. 1. All our violence against their civilians is a matter of exceptions and anomalies, by bad apples and extremists. When they attack civilians, this represents the true…

Video campaign shows selection out of hundreds of thousands of inciting comments against 'leftists.' The pro-peace group is far from the only target of recent incitement — even the president is falling victim. Peace Now has launched an online video campaign to raise awareness about incitement, intolerance and hate speech directed specifically at "leftists" in Israel and expressed most visibly on Facebook. The organization produced a two-and-a-half minute video entitled, "The writing is still on the wall," displaying a selection of comments left on its Facebook page. To give you an idea of just a few: -Leftist whores burn already, you should all be…

Ten Jewish Israelis are suspected of severely beating two Palestinian men from Jerusalem in a wartime hate crime. Police believe some of the suspects are tied to right-wing anti-Arab group Lehava, Walla reports. Several Jewish Israeli suspects in the brutal attack of two Palestinians from East Jerusalem on July 25th are connected to anti-miscegenation, anti-Arab group Lehava, according to a report by Walla! News on Monday. In what Walla! describes as a "near lynch," a group of about 10 Jewish Israelis from the East Jerusalem settlement of Neve Yaakov assaulted Amir Shwiki and Samer Mahfouz of Beit Hanina with bats and iron rods…

There is soul-searching and there is the self-gratifying appearance of soul-searching. The deception of the latter lies within the words: 'Tear out these wild weeds from among us.' Confession: I held out hope, to the last minute, that the murderers of Mohammed Abu Khdeir would not be “mine” – Israeli, Jewish. The hope that they would belong to some other group, even, god help me, Mohammed’s own people, is primitive. I must acknowledge, helplessly, that at this moment, I felt a greater sense of identification with the presumed killers due to tribal and arbitrary designation of birth: Jewish (assuming none…

With Netanyahu’s hints at revenge, his imperviousness toward the rage surrounding the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir and his complete absence in the Israeli media, the prime minister is a party to the growing Jewish-Arab animosity. Instances of violence between Jews and Arabs are piling up: the video from the bus in Tel Aviv, reports of ‘price tag’ attacks, police violence, continued protests in Shuafat, protests in Wadi Ara and the Triangle, and there, overnight, a few Jewish drivers were reportedly attacked. In contrast to the Palestinians, the Jewish public hasn’t been exposed to the horrifying details of Muhammad Abu Khdeir's murder…

Heavy clashes take place in a number of East Jerusalem neighborhoods, leading to dozens of injuries, including two photographers from Activestills; Kerry conveys condolences to the Palestinian people over despicable murder; 'revenge' calls spread throughout Israeli social networks, streets of Jerusalem. Clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli police broke out Wednesday morning when news broke of a suspected kidnapping and murder of a Palestinian teenager in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina hours earlier. Speculation that the killing was a nationalistically motivated and perpetrated by Jewish Israelis as revenge for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the…

It's not uncommon to hear Israeli leaders accuse the Palestinian Authority and its media outlets of inciting to violence against Israelis and Jews. But is it actually true? A closer examination of the evidence reveals that the habitual blaming of the Palestinian Authority is not only mostly unfounded, it is the product of a direct line between right-wing groups and the Prime Minister's Office. By Yizhar Be'er (Translated from Hebrew by Miriam Erez) John Kerry’s arrival in the region and the looming “threat” of a final-status agreement have compelled right-wing leaders to pull out the old canard of “Palestinian incitement.”…

An Israeli student's accusations that her teacher expressed leftist views, amplified by a far-right political figure, now have the teacher fighting for his job. Israel’s education minister ordered the Ort school system to investigate a complaint against a high school teacher from one of its schools in the north of Israel, following a letter from a 12th-grade student. The student wrote to the minister alleging that her teacher promoted extreme-left political opinions in class, including criticism of the IDF and saying that Israel was not a state for Jews, but rather for Palestinians. The teacher was called in for a…

Violence and incitement in education should be condemned on, and from every side. But clinging to and focusing only on the worst of the 'other side' can be even worse than incitement. The Hamas leadership in Gaza is replacing Palestinian Authority high school textbooks with its own, New York Times reported Monday. The Hamas textbooks, the story explains, promote militancy and a Hamas-tinted reading of history, Palestinian identity and the conflict. The report is upsetting. The last thing this conflict needs is even more extreme, hard-line and distorted renditions of its history for any of the parties involved. It is also disturbing because…

About +972 Magazine

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.